Sunday afternoon we went to Preparation Canyon State Park, which is somewhere in the Loess Hills with no cell phone reception. On the way there we drove through some little towns with lots of people walking around in camoflauge and so many yards full of dilapidated buildings, rusted mystery machines, weeds, and trash that Jon was beside himself. I think this was due to all the cleanup in order, not the monumental tetanus risk.

The fall colors at the park surprised me; I had assumed everything would just be dead, but it exceeded my low expectations. First we hiked trails around the pond, (without the map, which was left in the trunk) and then the fishing business came out. Under Jon's expert advice of "quit twitching it around so much," I even caught a fish! You didn't even have to use the crank because the fish were so crazy about these grasshoppers he was catching with his hands (ew) that you just watched one eat the hook and then lifted it out of the water.

On a totally different note, we have finally eaten the first squash that my mother sent us. I have been over-googling ways to serve squash that you won't realize it's squash. Clearly, I only like the idea of eating a squash. It came from a garden. It is free. It is good for you. It is orange. Jon is 100% anti-squash and equally anti-the-idea-of-squash. I put it in minestrone. I'm not sure if it legitimately counts as minestrone. I had a minestrone recipe pulled up on my computer, discovered I hardly had any of the ingredients, and then proceeded to add anything to the crock pot that I wanted to get rid of.

Anyway, the conversation with Jon went like this:

It worked, he ate the squash.